Notes From Underground (17 page)

For two hours I patrolled the streets, among housing complexes with their Sunday noises and Sunday smells, along dusty tracks pitted by bulldozers and lined by the unfilled concrete frames of new constructions. I found no farmhouse, and nothing resembling the little street in which it had stood. An uncanny feeling came over me. It crossed my mind that Betka did not exist. Her image had appeared in another element like Rusalka at the water's lip, trembling on the edge of things, and then vanishing. My glimpses of her were mirages, reflections in the mirror of my anxiety of a figure that bore no relation to the one I had invented, and to which I clung as a woman clings to her stillborn baby, refusing to believe that there is nothing there.

I took this thought with me into the gorge beyond the road, to wander beside the stream that flowed in those days clear and strong beneath the cliffs. The bent saplings of birch and maple struggled for life on the steep slopes of stone; birds darted from cranny to cranny in the shadows, and at one point a mangy dog appeared above me at the edge of the gorge, his square head thrust fearlessly through a screen of couch grass. All around was the sound of the stream, and above it the bare branches of ash trees tied down the
sky. A screen of cloud touched the grey cliffs at the horizon's rim and fluttered like a skirt. The world had closed around me, and for a long time I listened to the stream, and to the cliffs honeycombed with voices. I heard the voice of Dad in the role of Prince Ctirad, and of Mother telling him to sing more quietly lest the neighbors complain. And the hollow feeling grew within, as though a great hand had scooped out the living matter. I was a dead person, and the tears on my cheeks were tears of glass. This feeling lasted until Monday afternoon. When she opened the door and stepped back from it, I half-expected to find no one there. I walked towards the desk, eyes averted, seeking emptiness. Then she seized me from behind, her hands around my chest.

“Honzo!”

“No,” I replied, “not Honza, just a mistake of yours.”

She jumped round to face me.

“You mean I'm a mistake of yours.”

I looked at those eyes that looked into me. Their silver sheen lay over deep waters. And there was something moving below the surface—something that was seeking me, preparing to emerge from its element and to cast off its invulnerability in order to be at my side. I had the sense that Betka had done this for no one else, that I was—despite my youth and maybe because of my youth—the recipient of a peculiar privilege. In a moment my jealousy vanished, and I stood before her in a state of helpless apology.

“Betka, I am sorry. Something upset me, something quite unimportant.”

“Not unimportant at all,” she said, and putting her hands on my shoulders, pressed me down gently so that I sat at the desk. Next to her notebook lay the copy of
Rumors
, in Mother's blue pasteboard binding, and I noticed many slips of paper between the pages.

“You have every right to complain,” she went on. “Of course I should have said more about my work, my family, where I come from,
and where I'm going. You have told me everything, and I have only told you what you need to know.”

“What
you
think I need to know.”

“Yes, if you like. So what do
you
think you need to know?”

“What you do when you are not with me. And where you are when you are not in this room. And yes: who it was came to the door on Wednesday last. And why.”

“Is that it?”

“For the time being, yes.”

“When I am not with you, I am often at the children's hospital. Sometimes I stay there, for they run a residential school, an
internát
, and I make myself useful as a teacher. Or, if I am not there, maybe I am playing in our little group. Because there are posh parties even in Prague, where people who pride themselves on their taste sit in antique chairs and listen to ancient music. And the person who came to the door was possibly Vilém, whose room this is, and if he didn't mention it when I saw him on Saturday, it was because I had forbidden him ever to invade my private space, and there, I suppose, is the story you need to know.”

While she spoke, Betka was looking at me with a tender and half-smiling expression, as though talking to a child. I nodded meekly and, drawing up the bedside chair, she sat down beside me and took my hand.

“I was a student in the school of nursing and Vilém was teaching in the Academy of Music. He sent a notice around the university proposing a baroque ensemble. The early music movement was big in the West back then, and I was always envious when I read about it or heard things on the radio. One of the last things my dad had done for me, before the divorce, was to buy a theorbo. So when Vilém sent round his appeal I was ready and willing to join. I had to think a bit. The Solidarity Union was taking off in Poland, and the government was nervous. The Party has its own version of Christ's saying: when
two or three are gathered in any name but ours, there shall we be among them. But I decided there was no risk. Although the Party was down on rock music, a baroque ensemble, led by an official professor, could hardly stir things up as the Plastic People had done.

“I was sharing a room in a student house in Nusle with a girl from North Bohemia who spent her evenings playing with the radio, hoping to hear some scraps of Western pop. I rescued myself through our early music group. I liked it that Vilém was attracted to me, liked it that he enjoyed my voice and wanted to give me the star role in our performances, liked it that he found excuses to detain me after rehearsals and talk to me. We became close, and for a while I didn't care that he was married with kids of his own. I wasn't going to fall in love with him, in any case. Interesting people are rare; rarer still are those who trouble to impart their knowledge. Vilém, you see, opened a door for me. He knew what I wanted to know; he had connections; he was an insider, a Party member, a smooth operator who could get things done. For me, he was a means to self-improvement, the ladder to get up on top. And I expect that disappoints you.”

I shook my head. This much I had guessed. And had she gone on to tell me of a farmhouse in Divoká Šárka, where Vilém maintained her as his mistress, that too would not have surprised me. But the next thing she said was truly surprising.

“Vilém let me borrow this room: he had kept it from his own student days, and had no use for it since getting married. After a few attempts, he stopped trying to seduce me and sought cooperation of a different sort. Early music scores can be obtained only from the West, since our archives here are chaotic and largely forbidden. This provided an excuse to visit embassies, and in the course of the visits, to obtain invitations to play. Vilém insisted that I should do the negotiations, presenting myself as the leader: he did not want to be noticed. Once inside, however, he made a point of getting to know the diplomats and their guests. Vilém speaks good English and
German, and has an easy charm that comes across as sincerity. He would come away from our concerts with more invitations, as well as with information about Czech musicians living abroad, about Czech musicians who had sought to emigrate, and other things that I could only guess at. I didn't like what he was doing, but who was I to complain about it? I was getting a lot from the experience: not only the pleasure of playing and singing and learning a real craft—one that will help me in all kinds of ways if this country finally enters the modern world. I was making useful friends, like Bob Heilbronn. I was seeing the world, and getting to places that only those with Party protection can be trusted to get to. And you see, I treated myself to the excuse that many who move on the edge make use of. I told myself that, when the time came to act against the system, I would be better placed on account of being to this tiny extent inside it. And I think you know what I mean.”

I was staring in a shocked way at the desk, and could only just manage a nod.

“What I did for him was innocent enough—for instance, collecting those old editions of Fibich, Janá
č
ek, and Martin
ů
, which he adds to his collection and also sometimes barters at the West German Embassy for the music we need. But he began to snoop and pry in ways that troubled me. He found out somehow that I attended Rudolf's seminar, and asked me to take him along. I refused. He found out that I was part of a samizdat circulating library and wanted to join. Again, I refused. He came here once or twice in my absence and let himself in with the spare key he had kept, so as to look through the books I was reading. And he asked me where I obtained them and to whom I passed them on. All this was done with utmost good humor, of course, and he said that he had only one motive, which was his love and concern for me, which could take no other form since he respected my inability to reciprocate. And, you see, it was half true. Vilém enjoys Party privileges of a middling sort;
he is bound to make reports, and he is entrusted with tasks that only he can perform and which touch on things I don't want to know about. If I need anything that he can give, he will rush to provide it. He loves his wife and children and works for their well-being as my mother worked for mine. He is a good listener, and his Party card does not prevent him from feeling a keen sympathy for the dissidents, for condemning their imprisonment and especially the harsh treatment of Magor, who had been his teenage idol. Without Vilém I could not have achieved what I have managed, including the little I have managed for you.

“Then one day, it all changed. Have you not noticed how it is with us? A kind of soporific compromise, a set of tacit agreements that keep everything on an even keel until suddenly, quite unexpectedly, there comes a great wave, and all that was secure and certain is swept away? Dear Honza, this has happened to me many times, and who am I to make a fuss about it? My case is not exceptional, nor is Vilém's.

“Well, he had discovered in me an asset, and that asset was Hans, a minor attaché at the West German embassy, who fell in love with me. Vilém's vigilant jealousy took instant note of the fact, and his self-interest likewise. I hesitate to say this, because Vilém is fundamentally decent. Of course he had made compromises. Of course he was reporting on the people he met. But he recognized the limit beyond which it was morally impossible to go. And one evening, he reached that limit and transgressed it.

“You don't want the details. You don't want to hear about that hour in a car parked in the woods above KarlÅ¡tejn, Vilém's car, of course, which was never followed, and Hans beside me in the back of it, grasping my hand, watching me with beseeching eyes. Vilém wanted an invitation to Germany, one fixed at the highest level, but with a secure job secretly promised so that he could defect with his family. Hans was offering such an invitation with his eyes—but to me, and an
invitation that needed no diplomacy to complete it. Did I love Hans? I told you: I don't make that mistake, haven't made it for years, even if I have made it now. But yes, I was at peace with him; yes, I could have followed him; yes, I could have said to him everything he wanted to hear, save ‘yes.' One day you'll understand, Honza.

“That was when Vilém dropped out of my life. He promised Hans that he would make it possible for me to follow: he offered me as bait. And of course he
wanted
me to follow, wanted to continue in some comfortable Western university the erotic games he had tried to play in Prague. I was young, Honza, confused, and lonely too. But I was not merchandise, and I had my reasons for staying here. Hans told Vilém he would do what he could, and I said ‘count me out,' and not another word as we drove back to Prague. Next day, Vilém came knocking here, pleading, and threatening too, reminding me of the danger I had been courting in my affair—yes, that is what he called it—with Hans. For it was Hans who placed in my hands those little cyclostyled texts with the magnifying glass in the spine, which he smuggled in the diplomatic bag from Germany. Vilém stood there, on the threshold of the room that is his, and I let him rave and plead and weep. What was I to do? I needed Vilém's protection. I wanted to learn, to live freely, to read and think and be. With Vilém's group, I was earning money, and I could do as I wished without incurring a charge of parasitism. To be outside the system as I was, and yet wholly unprotected, was to be like you—that cheerless underground creature who came up blinking into the light but who blinked so beautifully that I couldn't stop myself from loving him, alas. You mustn't blame me, Honza. Think of your mother. One way or another, she too found protection and used it to lift a little corner of the blanket that was smothering her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I did nothing. Hans was recalled to Germany without an explanation. And Vilém and I agreed to go on as before, with no reproaches,
provided he left me alone in this place until the day when he would ask me to leave. That day will come, and I must be ready for it.”

In everything she said and did, Betka withheld as much as she revealed. But what she revealed was so full of the distinctive life and ambition that shone from her that I could only accept it as the truth—a partial truth, but the truth all the same.

This story was unlike the others, however, in a crucial respect. Although it was the truth, it was the truth about a lie. In order to live in truth, Betka had lived a lie, pretending to herself that she was not tainted by whatever deals Vilém had made in order to protect himself and her. This was the paradox that had magnetized me from the beginning. Her social competence, so far from the diffidence of my contemporaries, her firm melodious voice, so unlike the cagey whisperings at Rudolf's and Igor's seminars, her habit of querying, dismissing, and even laughing at the sterile solemnities of the dissidents—these were exactly the qualities that enabled her to stand outside our world, looking down into the catacombs and up towards the stars. But only a protected person could have acquired them.